Safe at Home

These are the strangest of days. All over the world the mantra is “stay at home.” It’s as if the entire population has adopted my life’s motto. I’m the stay at home girl. I’ve always been the stay at home girl. When I was little, we moved a lot. My dad was in the Navy and we made our way up and down the east coast. My mom was a super-mover. She could unpack a house and make it feel like home in three days flat. And she was proud of that.

I hated moving. My goal for grown-up life was to live in the same town, in the same house forever. It was a spoken goal. I articulated it all the time.

And so there came a time, nearly twenty years ago, when we found a house with room to grow and we moved six little kids into it, just a few days before Christmas. The move itself was stressful. (Aren’t all moves stressful?) We moved a mile from our previous house. My friends descended on the new house and we had everything moved in and ready for Christmas in three days. I did my mom proud.

We’ve lived in that house for two decades. We’ve welcomed three new babies here. We all slept here the night before our eldest son got married, and we all shared bathrooms and ironing boards and not a few tears as our family opened itself to a whole new season of life that day.

The tree in our front yard is in beautiful bloom. You can see it perfectly from my bedroom window. I remember how I watched that tree go from full leaf to gold to bare in the days I stayed in bed, waiting for my youngest child’s safe arrival.

Every day, this house has held the old familiar rhythm. Slip quietly from bed, down to the kitchen, cup of tea, prayers in the living room chair, welcome the children as they wake, breakfast, new beginning. Some days—many, many days—I did those steps with babies in my arms or toddlers on my hips. Some days, even now, there is a child or two who will fight sleep in the early hours just to be the one who gets to share the quiet with me as the sun awakens. These are the treasured patterns of our life.

As people have grown, we’ve thoughtfully considered this house. We’ve added bedrooms and shored up bathrooms. We’ve built bookshelves and then some more bookshelves. We eliminated the carpet long ago because hardwood made so much more sense. The big, flat backyard held two sets of soccer goals as boys grew from tiny to men, ever up for a game of “backyard soccer” with their best mates ever. There’s a triple bunk in the biggest corner room and a triple closet, too—a “late” addition for the three littlest girls, the ones who have lived their whole lives under this roof.

In one final crazy act of love, we finally re-did the kitchen and made it exactly what I ever wanted. I thought we were sealing the deal with my forever house. This spring, we were going to give it all a fresh coat of paint. Instead, we are here, gathered in, safe at home, and making plans to leave.

This is the house that has held my prayers—safe, snug, secure. This is the house that the little girl who moved all the time imagined in her dreams of someday.

And now, while the whole world is recognizing the value of home, I am packing up my household goods and preparing to move them to a shelter under a different roof. We are moving. Leaving. And after months of telling myself otherwise, I acknowledge in this space that has held so many memories of home, that I am grieving. As I work my way through years of things gathered here and I give myself a little time to marvel at how much we have lived and loved here, I find myself praying all the time for the woman who will make her home here next. I hope she knows how much care was put into creating home of this house. I hope it blesses her, too.

There will be time to embrace all the beautiful possibilities that await us. And there will be time to be giddy with the excitement of all things new. I look forward to sharing all of that in this space. But today, as the world tilts on its axis, I am wishing a little bit that I could just stay safe at home.